What’s Inside This Book Will Totally Change Your Perspective On These Famous Sites

If you’re a travel buff, you know that there’s nothing more satisfying than standing in the shadows of famous landmarks.

There’s something special about craning your neck to see the top of the Eiffel Tower or approaching the Statue of Liberty from the harbor. Beloved sites like these become benchmarks of exploration — monuments to the sense of wanderlust that sends people thousands of miles across the globe each year.

But when it comes time to conjure up images in the mind’s eye, these landmarks present the most complete versions of themselves. We see the Taj Mahal’s famous dome in the reflecting pool. We see Tower Bridge looming over the Thames. We do not, however, see their skeletons.

But this book by Wolfgang Wild and Jordan Lloyd (of Retronaut and Dynamichrome, respectively) is about to change your perspective on the landmarks you thought you knew.

Aptly named “The Paper Time Machine,” this 300-page publication sheds new light on 130 historical images of structures from around the world.

According to the publisher, “This is a unique book — a collection of historical remixes that exist alongside the original photographs to draw out qualities, textures, and details that have hitherto remained hidden.”

To learn more about the book and Dynamichrome’s colorization process, check out the video below.

“So realistic are the results,” a representative from Unbound said, “that the decades and centuries that separate us from the subjects of these images simply fall away.”

And that allows us to get close to history in a way that’s bound to teach us a few important lessons about how far we’ve come. If you’d like to add this book to your collection, you can donate to Unbound’s crowdfunding campaign here. You can also find more information on the publisher’s website.